1. Related Technical Fields
Related technical fields include methods of producing traffic signal information, a method of providing traffic signal information, and navigation apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional navigation apparatus search for a route from a current position to destination and display a detected route. Conventional navigation apparatus include map data, including road information and signal location information, stored on an external storage medium such as a hard disk or an optical disk. The conventional navigation apparatus display, on a display, a map indicating locations such as intersections where traffic signals are disposed. However, the navigation apparatus does not provide information associated with the status of the traffic signals.
An in-vehicle camera system has been proposed to take an image of a signal using an in-vehicle camera (as disclosed, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-306498). In this system, an image of a signal is compared with color information stored in a storage unit to identify the current color of the signal, and the various characteristic of the vehicle, such as the vehicle speed, is controlled based on the comparison.